After talking about Lockers and the different ways of delivering online orders, we cannot fail to mention a new trend that can revolutionize digital shopping and – most importantly – delivery times: so-called dark stores.
What is meant by dark stores
With the Covid-19 pandemic, eCommerce has experienced an unprecedented boom (+26% in 2020 compared to the previous year, source Politecnico di Milano B2C eCommerce Observatory) and the number of e-shoppers continues to grow exponentially. To cope with the steady growth of online orders, many stores are reorganizing their supply chain and proximity warehouses are no longer enough.
Thus, the need arises to create stores dedicated exclusively to online shopping, dark stores in fact.
A dark store, or “dark store,” is not open to the general public like any retail outlet, but is a real proximity warehouse (organized, however, as if it were a store, with aisles and shelves) located at strategic points in cities and allowing logistics operators to prepare the order and deliver it to the sender in no time, given the geographical proximity to the final recipient.
Large-scale retail in the forefront
The world of large-scale retail is the one that is investing the most in this new type of warehouse (back in 2001, for example, Walmart and Esselunga tested this delivery mode). Glovo, the Spanish multi-category delivery platform, aims to open 15 dark stores by the end of 2021 between Milan and Turin, as well as Block and Gorillas, which in Milan guarantee delivery of groceries ordered online in as little as 10 minutes thanks to the widespread presence of proximity stores.
The phenomenon, however, does not only concern food. Some realities in the fashion retail world are also starting to move in this direction, although in this case rather than new openings, they are conversions of pre-existing stores into hubs serving eCommerce (also for pickup and return of goods) to cope with the increase in online sales and the decline in sales in physical stores.
An eye on sustainability as well
As we have already recounted, proximity is a factor that always plays an advantage, including from the point of view of environmental sustainability, ensuring greener, less CO2-intensive deliveries without stressing the supply chain despite the reduced timelines.
The journey of products from the dark store to the final recipient, for example, being rather short (remember that dark stores are located in strategic points and therefore within a few kilometers of the buyer) is often carried out by electric vehicles or through riders, with an eye therefore also on environmental issues.
One possible risk to the resilience of the system?
The growing need to fulfill online orders in a very short time, however, risks pandering to a trend that is growing as much as it is potentially dangerous for the resilience of the entire logistics system: the so-called “logistics of the whim” and “all and now” that results in a reduction to the extreme of the expected (and expected by e-shoppers) delivery time.
Will the dark store philosophy that guarantees deliveries in as little as 10 minutes help accentuate this trend?
